“Mostly we are White and Alone”: Identity, Anxiety and the Past in Some White Z imbabwean Memoirs[Note 1. I would like to thank Jane Carey, Andrew Cohen, ...]

Using the space created by the land invasions, over the last ten years or so there has been a proliferation of exile memoirs written by white Z imbabweans living in the diaspora, which foreground colonial nostalgia and postcolonial anxiety. This article profiles elements of this latest wave of “white (female) writing”, arguing that writers such as A lexandra F uller construct their own personal narratives based on an extremely teleological and narrow interpretation of the history of Z imbabwe. It is argued that memoirs are used as a mechanism to uphold an idealised (i.e. powerful) white identity, because whites' current “destabilised” identity has resulted in them clinging to a seemingly utopian version of both what it meant to be white and the past. The article also examines some aspects of whiteness studies, utilising P eter M c L aren's framework to argue that these memoirs are beset by a whiteness of social amnesia.